When belief was needed most-
by dropout-ninja
Summary: -their gods had become ghosts. Who could swim against the flood? Who could gate the unstoppable?


_Halo and its characters do not belong to me. All rights go to their respective owners._

_Warnings go for spoilers up to Halo 3 and some vague mentions of violence._

_I have not read many of the EU books or had a chance to play Halo 4 or 5 and it's been a few years since I've watched a playthrough of those two, so there may be inconsistencies between this and canon._

_Discovering that the Forerunners were merely mortals and extinct mortals at that had to be a messy turn of events for any of the ex-Covenant facing the Flood_

* * *

There was no stopping them. There was no killing them. They were a hive. A mindless hive. Killing one body did nothing.

And they, it, would spread. It would flood over them all and nothing could stop that.

No _mortal_ could.

The parasite was sickening. The sangheili could smell it. Everywhere. On everything. And hear it. Oh, he could hear it. The noises the bodies it lay infected in made. Squish. Squelch. And the screams. He could see it. See the rot. See the bones hanging from the yellowed skin. See death incarnate.

The same death for all. For him, a Sanghelli. For the Covenant. For humanity.

For the Forerunners. For the gods he had been raised with.

The same year he had learned of the parasite, then faced it in person and felt a clamp placed inside his chest to paralyze him in helpless fear

(helpless, helpless, because there was nothing a mortal could do against this flood)

was also the same year he had learned of the Forerunner's reality. Of their presence in this galaxy long before him, not as gods who discovered and traveled the Great Journey but as terrified mortals who spent their last breath creating superweapons to defeat this unkillable creature.

Weapons that did what they were intended to; rings that completely eradicated every Forerunner from life.

And if that was reality, and these monsters he still saw daily were reality, then where, he begged to know, was the hope? Where were the ones to place hope on?

He knew not of the humans answers. But he knew that for all who came here from the Covenant, the answer was simply that those ones were long dead by their own mortal hands.

* * *

There were some others who had problems being on board with humans and he could only somewhat understand why. He himself didn't quite understand why they hated humans for the reasons they did; for the _old_ reasons.

The new reason should be that humans had erased the reality of those old ones. They had torn down everything known about Forerunners. Prophets. The sacred rings.

If it wasn't for humans, he would still be a part of the Covenant. And they would fail to defeat the flood. But they would fail with the humans too. The Forerunners had failed, hadn't they?

But he'd have had hope to the end. The clamp would be there, but the paralysis would not. The paralysis came from the absolute. From the unknown.

From the very despair that arose when faced with a supernatural threat while discovering your supernatural allies were but a fictional fantasy in practicality.

Some of those who got along with humans went to do just that. Others growled and stayed amongst themselves and reminiscent of when they were able to kill the weaker species. He didn't go fraternize. Even though he wondered about them- about their religions. About the possibility that if the humans had exposed the Covenant's as a lie, theirs could be true. Could be hope. Against the flood, he just needed hope. Without the Great Journey, he had a shortage of hope. That was, in truth, the real reason he did not go fraternize. Although in fairness, he was the same as any sangheili on board; he had killed them before.

The sangheili had heard humans scream before, he'd made them scream, his fellows had made them, he'd killed them, watched them die-he'd heard _**them **_scream and it was visceral it was death alive it was noise and it followed him here so that he could hear them scream from the hanging jaws of humans and sangheili both, and even if he dug a blade in to tear his auditory canals out he would still hear them just scream and scream and CALL-

He would give anything to block it out.

* * *

It would be time right about now. On Sanghelios, their star would be midway in the sky. On High Charity, they would become respectful in their silence.

They would all watch a short service and do a short ritual. It was routine and automatic. The sangheili wanted nothing more than to do it now. Because now he felt nothing but the clamp-

The clamp around his chest that constricted in fear. In terror. In the face of the flood that none could stop.

They needed a miracle. They needed a way to kill the unkillable. They needed a power to lay on and just **_hope_-**

What had those prayers meant then? Just routine? Now they were needed. But now they were impossible. Their lords were gone. The words a lie spread by the traitorous prophets. It was complex and terrible and-and-

for him it was terrible because of the clamp. Because of the knowledge of what became of the Forerunners. That his old thought to be gods faced the flood and realized they could do nothing to kill it; nothing but attempt to starve it to non-existence.

Nothing but remove its fuel source.

They could do nothing but kill themselves.

No otherworldly entities had swung in to save the Forerunners from doing just so. And no Forerunners would come to them now; a misfit bunch of enemies that had now realized that their fight meant nothing in the face of the unstoppable hunger of the grave.

The irony hung over him sickly, just as the paralysis did. He had never needed faith before. But now he desperately needed something, someones, to cling to.

Now that belief was needed most, his gods had become ghosts. And the awe he still held for them left him in despair that if the Forerunners had not received aid and had resorted to mass suicide in effort to stall the inevitable, they all would do no better.

* * *

_AN-__Thank you for your time! If you noticed any grammar/spelling errors, please point them out so I can correct them :)_


End file.
